Alice in the Know

  Tracy served bread pudding with rum sauce and raisins for dessert, and I licked up every bite.

  “Will you teach me to make this?” I asked.

  “Simple as pie,” she said.

  “Mr. Watts asked if I had any lasagna on me,” I told Lester. “He said to bring some the next time I came.”

  “Could I make up a little dinner for him with these leftovers?” Tracy asked. “He could put it in his fridge for tomorrow.”

  I could tell from Lester’s face that he’d had his eye on those leftovers himself, but he said, “Sure, I’ll take them down to him later.”

  “Let me help with the dishes,” I said. “In fact, why don’t you two go watch a program or something, and I’ll clean up here.”

  “We always do them together, but three pairs of hands are even better,” Les said.

  The problem with being the guest of a couple is that you never know just how long you’re supposed to stay. If you think they want their privacy and leave right after dinner, it may look as though you came only for the food. But if you hang around after dinner, you wonder if they’re waiting for you to go home. I kept watching for a moment alone with Les so I could ask, but it didn’t happen. I washed the pots and pans in the sink while Les dried and Tracy put them away.

  Then she said, “My aunt gave me a new edition of Trivial Pursuit. Want to play, Alice?”

  “Sure,” I told her.

  So we went into the living room and opened the box. We were using a question pack about history, and I was pleased that I knew so many answers. If Tracy wondered about the IQ of her future sister-in-law, I aced it. The New Deal? I nailed it. Watergate? A cinch.

  “You’ve got a bright sister,” Tracy said to Les.

  “Well,” he said, “sometimes the light’s on and sometimes the bulb’s a little dim, what can I say?” I gave him a poke.

  We talked then about my first two days on the job at Hecht’s and about the woman who had stashed all those garments beneath her clothes.

  “Sometimes they’re repeat offenders, and salespeople know who to look out for,” Lester said.

  “And sometimes they make mistakes,” said Tracy seriously.

  “Yeah. That would be embarrassing,” I said.

  Paul Sorenson came in then, and Tracy got up to get bread pudding for him.

  Shall I go? I mouthed to Lester.

  Anytime, he mouthed back.

  So I followed Tracy out to the kitchen while Les and Paul checked out the baseball game. “It was a great dinner,” I told her. “Thanks for the invitation.”

  “And thanks for the perfume,” she said. She gave me a quick hug, one hand holding the dish of pudding. I said good night to Les and Paul and went back out to the car.

  Lester seemed so domesticated when he was with Tracy. So content. I thought of buying a T-shirt for Tracy that read I’M THE ONE, but then I thought better of it.

  It was a beautiful summer night, perfect for riding with the windows rolled down, my favorite CD in the player. I drove slowly, imagining what it would be like to have my friends in the car, me taking them somewhere. But that wouldn’t be for a while. Dad had laid down the law: I couldn’t have anyone in the car other than family until I had been driving six months without an accident or a ticket. The slightest fender bender, and the six-month waiting period would begin all over again.

  Just then, as though God himself were testing my reflexes, a car on my right came straight through the intersection toward me, even though I had the green light.

  I slammed on my brakes and the other driver slammed on his, coming to a stop at a slant, five inches from the hood of Dad’s car.

  For a moment I thought my heart would rip through my chest, it was pounding so hard. I had the light! I wasn’t even speeding! If he hadn’t braked, there was nothing I could have done to stop him. And I remembered Dad saying, “You can be right and still be dead, you know.” And Les telling me, “Drive as though everyone else is a lunatic.”

  I was shaking and could feel my hands trembling on the steering wheel. The light had changed now, so I had the red, but I was still out in the middle of the intersection with the other car. Somebody honked. Then someone else. Cars started moving slowly around us. Finally the other driver, a middle-aged man, backed up a little, steered around me, and drove off. Not even a wave. I wondered if I should have got his license plate number. But when the light changed again, I knew just how lucky I had been. I drove home and carefully parked the car in the driveway.

  3

  Busted

  One good thing about not having a boyfriend is that you can be yourself. More yourself, anyway. You don’t have to worry if he took what you said the wrong way. If he really liked what you gave him for his birthday. If the reason his cell phone was busy all evening was because he was talking to another girl. If he’d be mad if you said you wanted to skip this Saturday—just catch up on stuff you had to do. All those ifs.

  But there was a new guy at Mark’s pool the following night. Brian brought a friend who wore loud Hawaiian-print trunks. His last name was Keene, and kids called him “Keeno.” When Liz said she’d heard he had a dolphin tattoo on his rear end, he promptly lowered his trunks and showed it to us. A fun and crazy kind of guy.

  It was a hot night without a breeze, and the water felt great. We lounged around the deck after each swim and dived back into the water whenever the humidity got to us. Keeno and I ended up sharing the same chaise lounge as well as the last slice of pizza the guys had ordered. He grabbed my fingers and licked off a strand of cheese.

  “Get out!” I laughed. “You’re so gross!”

  He just grinned. “So how many guys have you gone out with?” he asked.

  “Beginning in kindergarten?”

  “Sure, if you want.”

  I’d never really counted before, and suddenly I felt a little embarrassed. Only four boyfriends? Donald Sheavers, Patrick Long, Eric Fielding, and Sam Mayer? Donald Sheavers hardly mattered, and I hadn’t gone out with Eric much at all.

  “Too many to count,” I joked.

  “Okay, name the last one.” Keeno went to a private school, so he wasn’t up on our history.

  “Sam Mayer,” I said.

  “What was he like?”

  “Nice. Funny sometimes. Considerate.”

  “So why’d you dump him? Or were you the dumpee?”

  “None of your business!” I told him.

  “Okay. Who else?”

  “Patrick Long.”

  “Yeah, I’ve heard Brian talk about him. The brain, right? The guy who’s going through four years of high school in three?”

  “That’s Patrick.”

  “So … how far did you go with Patrick?”

  This time I pushed him off the chaise lounge. “Get out!” I said, glad that Patrick wasn’t there to hear all this.

  He looked up at me crazily from the deck where he’d landed and seemed perfectly content just to lie there. “If I guess, will you tell me?” he asked.

  “No!” I exclaimed, but he made me laugh. Pamela caught on to what he’d been asking, and she laughed too.

  “Let’s go get some ice cream,” someone said.

  Most of the kids went inside and changed into jeans or shorts, but Liz and I had walked over to Mark’s with cover-ups over our suits and had nothing to change into. I climbed into Brian’s car along with Keeno and Mark and Penny, and I hoped my terry-cloth cover-up would absorb the water.

  “Baskin-Robbins?” someone called to us from another car.

  “No. Let’s go to the Creamery,” Brian called back, and we were off. It was a longer drive, out past Olney where the land became rural, a nice ride on a summer evening. We rode with the windows down, the breeze drying our hair, a new CD in the player.

  When we filed into the Creamery, the manager greeted us like long-lost cousins, happy for our business. Liz and I were giggling because we’d left wet spots on the vinyl seats in Brian’s car.

  In the Creamery I
sat down on a stool at the counter, then moved over one to sit beside Liz.

  “Hey! You left the seat wet!” Brian said.

  “Don’t mind her,” Keeno said to the waitress. “Our friend here isn’t toilet trained.”

  “Oh, we’re not particular,” the waitress joked back, and we laughed as we looked up at the choices listed on the wall and tried to make our selections.

  Most of us ordered the double-thick malteds that the Creamery was famous for, but Keeno asked the waitress how much she’d charge to let him make his own.

  “I’ll have to ask,” she said, and went over to talk to the manager. When she came back, she said, “Company rules: You can’t go behind the counter, but for two bucks more, you can choose your own ingredients as long as they all fit in the blender.”

  “Sold!” said Keeno, and we began to smile as he ticked off his choices and the girl at the counter scooped them up: “One scoop each of vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry… . One banana … butterscotch topping … crushed pineapple …”

  “Keeno, it’s going to be gross!” Penny said.

  “Uh … marshmallow … chocolate syrup … How much more room we got?”

  The waitress showed him the blender. “About an inch more, but you’ve got to add cream, you know,” she said.

  “Skip the cream. I want it thick,” said Keeno. “Got any blueberries? Peanut butter?”

  “Euuw!” said Liz.

  When the blender was filled to the top mark, Keeno signaled the waitress. “Start your engines,” he said. The blender seemed to groan with the load, and the waitress left it on for three minutes while she and another counter girl filled our orders. When Keeno’s shake was finally delivered, it looked more like gravy, and not only his straw, but a metal spoon stuck up straight in the middle of it.

  “Mmm! Good!” Keeno said after the first taste, and offered to sell a slurp of it to anyone in the store for a dollar. Of course he got no takers.

  It was the kind of evening where everyone was in a good mood. We took our ice cream outside to the patio, where we propped our feet on the metal chairs, listened to the tree frogs, and watched the June bugs and mosquitoes get zapped by the electric insect killer near the door.

  Brian was horsing around with Penny. He’d slipped one sandal off and was trying to inch his toes up the calf of her leg. She’d pretend she didn’t notice and then, with lightning speed, try to catch his foot in her hand and tickle the bottom.

  I could see why guys went for Penny. She wasn’t just cute and petite, but she had an infectious laugh—the kind you enjoyed listening to. Sometimes I think guys teased her just to hear her laugh. And I’ll have to admit that, except for stealing my boyfriend—okay, flirting with him; Patrick did his share—Penny’s a nice person, to girls as well as to guys.

  Could I ever feel as close to her as I did to Pam and Liz and Gwen? I wondered. I was afraid that if I did, the first thing I’d want to ask her was what it was like with Patrick. Even, how far did they go? I was as bad as Keeno.

  But this was an evening to have fun, and back in Brian’s car again, Penny and Mark and I squeezed in the backseat, and Penny pointed out that I was still clutching my paper napkin. I joked that I just wanted a souvenir of the evening.

  Keeno picked up on that. “You want a souvenir?” he said. “I’ll find you a souvenir.”

  We were the last car in the lineup, and while Brian drove, Keeno kept humming to himself, “Souvenir … souvenir …” Out beyond the streetlights, trees overhung the dark road. And suddenly Keeno said, “Here! Pull over, Brian,” and the car lurched into a small clearing where the two-lane road narrowed down to one lane beside some construction equipment.

  Keeno jumped out of the car. Five seconds later he was back, pushing an orange traffic cone ahead of him, over the front seat and onto my lap in back.

  “Keeno!” I cried, as we burst into laughter. “What am I supposed to do with this?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “Put it on your dresser. Hang if from your rearview mirror if you want.”

  It was one of the smaller cones without the square on the bottom, but still, there was scarcely room for it in the backseat. Every time I tried to move it, it seemed to poke someone, and each time we howled some more.

  But the evening wasn’t over yet. Penny and Mark wanted a latte at Starbucks. By this time we’d gotten separated from the other cars, so it was only the five of us going for coffee.

  We piled out, and I started to leave the traffic cone behind, but Keeno said, “Hey! You wanted a souvenir! You’ve got to take it with you wherever you go, Alice!”

  Everyone shrieked as I stuck it up under my terry-cloth cover-up. At first glance, it looked as though I were pregnant.

  You should never try sitting down with a traffic cone under your cover-up. The tip of the cone kept popping out of the neck and poking me under the chin.

  “Bad baby! Bad! Bad! Bad!” Keeno scolded, shaking his finger at the cone.

  I’m sure the other customers thought we were all insane. Penny reached over now and then to stroke my stomach, but I was having a blast. So much fun, in fact, that I forgot the time, and it was ten till midnight when Brian let me out of the car in front of my house. My curfew was eleven thirty.

  When I got inside, carrying the traffic cone, Dad was in his armchair, reading the paper in his pajamas.

  “The time, Al … ,” he said, nodding toward the clock on the mantel. Then he saw the traffic cone in my arms and raised one eyebrow.

  “It’s this new guy, Keeno,” I said, laughing. “He’s absolutely nuts. He said he’d get me a souvenir of our evening, and before I knew it, he was pushing this traffic cone through the door of Brian’s car.”

  “You drove off with a traffic cone? Where?” asked Dad.

  “It’s no big deal,” I said. “Just some country road repair up beyond Olney.”

  “Well, you’re taking it back,” said Dad.

  “Oh, Dad!”

  “You think this is a joke?” he asked. “This could cause an accident, Al!”

  “Dad, there were others! It’s not like it was the only one!”

  “It goes back,” said Dad.

  “But I don’t know exactly where we got it!” I protested.

  “Then you’ll call up this boy and find out,” Dad insisted.

  I imagined myself having to call Brian and get Keeno’s number. Then telling Keeno that we had to take it back.

  “Well, maybe I can find the place myself,” I said quickly.

  I honestly didn’t think he’d hold me to it. But at a quarter of eight the next morning Dad tapped on my bedroom door and said, “What time are you due at Hecht’s today?”

  I could barely open one eye. “Noon,” I murmured.

  “Well, I need to be at my store by nine, so get dressed. We’re going to return that traffic cone,” he said.

  “Dad!” I protested sleepily.

  “I want you dressed and in the car in fifteen minutes,” he told me.

  I sat sullenly in the front seat, the stupid traffic cone on my lap, and tried to direct Dad to the route we’d taken home from the Creamery the night before.

  After a couple of turns I figured out the site was on a northern road off Georgia Avenue, and sure enough, we saw the construction crew and a line of traffic cones, minus one, narrowing the two lanes to one.

  Dad pulled off onto the shoulder as the men on the crew looked up. I could feel my cheeks burn as I opened the car door. Holding the cone in front of me, I walked over to the others and placed mine at the end of the row. Then I quickly got back in the car.

  They were staring at me—five men in sleeveless T-shirts, tattoos the length of their arms.

  One of them gave Dad a sort of play salute. Dad turned back on the road again, and we drove for a while without speaking. If Dad made a big scene over a little thing like a traffic cone, I thought, what would he do when something big happened?

  “I could have come home drunk or pregnant,
you know,” I said, glaring.

  “That’s supposed to make me feel better?” he said. “A family could have failed to notice that the road narrowed until a second too late and been killed, Al.”

  He always paints the most extreme thing that could possibly happen.

  I was quiet some more. Finally I said, “Weren’t you ever sixteen once?”

  “Yes, and that’s why I’m being extra cautious with you,” he said. “If you want to convince me you’re a responsible driver, show me you’re responsible even when you’re not driving.”

  Then I shut up because I had five more months to go before he’d let me have friends in the car when I drove, and it would be his car I was driving. If I was driving.

  I wondered what Patrick would have said if he’d been in the car with us last night. Patrick is so darn responsible sometimes that he seems like a grown man already.

  I saw him later that week at the CVS drugstore. You never want to run into a guy friend at the drugstore because you could be buying something embarrassing. Fortunately, I had only a package of Gillette Venus razors in my hand. Patrick was picking up some batteries.

  “Did Mark tell you the gang is trying to get together every Monday night at his pool?” I asked.

  “Yeah, I heard, but I had something else on Monday,” Patrick said. His smile was as friendly as ever, but somehow I felt that the “something” was probably “someone,” and the someone was probably Marcie, the girl he’d taken to the Jack of Hearts dance last spring.

  “So how’s it going?” I asked, meaning Marcie.

  “Life’s good,” said Patrick, meaning everything, I guess.

  “Gearing up for your senior year?”

  “Yeah. We start doing the old college tour this fall,” he said.

  “Where do you want to go?”

  “I’m applying at the University of Chicago and Bennington, for sure. After that, I don’t know.”

  Illinois and Vermont, I thought. They seemed so far away. The guy I’d known since sixth grade would be a “college man” while I was still back in Maryland borrowing traffic cones. I suddenly felt very insignificant and silly.